On Tuesday at the World Mobile Congress trade show in Barcelona Web pioneer Yahoo announced Yahoo Mobile,  an initiative targeting mobile device users that included a new mobile Web site and applications to act as a central access point for mobile phone users, the Sunnyvale, California-based company revealed. The new Yahoo Mobile initiative, which is expected to launch publicly in two stages over three months beginning at the end of March, became available to a select group of testers today. Yahoo Hopes To Draw Mobile Users To Web "Starting Point" Yahoo said one goal of the initiative was to make its mobile services available as a "highly-personalized mobile starting point to the Internet," an ambition the company has spoken of in the past but which has remained largely elusive until it released details of Yahoo Mobile on Tuesday. Yahoo's latest mobile push will use Yahoo's display advertising system, and targets not only smartphones such as Apple's popular iPhone and phones running Google's Android mobile operating system, which already serve as easy-to-use and powerful Web access hubs, but also less powerful Internet-capable cell phones. Yahoo hopes to woo this market with a slew of its own free iPhone-like features. "We believe the new Yahoo Mobile will transform the way millions of mobile users around the world will interact with the Internet," Yahoo executive vice president Marco Boerries said Tuesday in announcing the initiative, which was also unveiled in Barcelona. "Yahoo Mobile will enable users to create their own Internet starting point on their mobile device so they can better discover, connect to and stay informed about the people and things that are important to them," Yahoo's Boerries added in the Tuesday announcement. Yahoo Initiative To Allow Plenty Of Third-Party Content The first public release of Yahoo Mobile will support the iPhone and Apple's iPod Touch, other cell phones using  the open source WebKit-based Web browsers such as some Nokia Series 60 and Google Android devices, the browsers used in Research In Motion's BlackBerry Bold and Storm devices, phones running Microsoft Windows Mobile and Internet Explorer, and those running Opera Mini 4 series browsers, Yahoo said. The initial version was set to include Yahoo's oneSearch mobile search features, built on the company's "Search Monkey" technology, popular news stories chosen by Yahoo editors in a service called Yahoo Today, Yahoo's oneConnect tool for connecting with friends, along with Yahoo's e-mail, social network connection bridge, instant messaging, address book, news, and calendar features. The first release was also to include Yahoo onePlace, a Web bookmarking and content management system for keeping track of "news topics and sources, RSS feeds, weather conditions, sports scores, stock quotes, websites/blogs, horoscopes and movie theaters," Yahoo said Tuesday. SearchEngineWorld screen shots of Yahoo Mobile, courtesy of Yahoo, are shown above and below. Yahoo Looks To Give iPhone-like Features To Less Powerful Cellphones Yahoo said that it expected to release the version supporting "hundreds of select [cellphone] models from RIM, Windows Mobile, Nokia S60 and 40, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola" about two months later, with additional features including voice searching using oneSearch, Yahoo Maps, an integrated version of the Opera Mini Web browser, and a program to connect the Yahoo Mobile platform to services from other companies, called Yahoo Widgets. Some analysts saw Yahoo Mobile as a way to deliver certain iPhone-like services to less-powerful devices, while also improving on some of the functions built into more powerful smartphones. "Rich and well-integrated offerings like Yahoo Mobile, offered across a broad range of devices, will play central roles in the rapidly evolving mobile Internet space," noted Scott Ellison, vice president of mobile wireless at market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC). Two Phases Of Yahoo Mobile Rollout Begin In March And May "Yahoo Mobile represents significant and continued innovation by Yahoo! around creating a compelling and  engaging user experience with mobile data services, and especially the mobile Internet," Ellison added. As the mobile initiative rolls out Yahoo expects to leverage some 70 partnerships it has formed with mobile service operators over the past several years to bring Yahoo Mobile to a base of 850 million cellphone customers worldwide. The late March 2009 rollout of Yahoo Mobile will be available to Yahoo's 25 million United States users, along with those in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, France, India and Germany, Yahoo noted. Yahoo said Tuesday that versions of the new mobile applications would become available in other regions over the remainder of 2009. Yahoo Announces New Unified Mobile Site And Services By allowing users of the new Yahoo Mobile to access information such as Google's Web-based e-mail service Gmail, Twitter, YouTube and other popular Internet locations, and not only Yahoo's own Web properties and services, the Yahoo Mobile initiative announced Tuesday was seen as a step toward helping the Sunnyvale firm attract new users and retail existing ones. One member of the popular online discussion forums operated by  WebmasterWorld, a community of mostly technically savvy webmasters and search engine marketing (SEM) professionals founded by chief executive Brett Tabke, saw Tuesday's move by Yahoo as targeting a portion of the mobile market that may eventually cease to exist once all smartphones are able to easily browse the regular, non-mobile, version of the Web. "Take a look at the more modern mobile devices such as the iPhone -- it does just fine with regular content," wrote a WebmasterWorld member using the handle "swa66." "The focus on mobile users with a special need is at best a transient phase," the same user added. Related Links:
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